


What If - A Friend?

by koalathebear



Series: What If? [4]
Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M, Gen, Missing Scene, Speculative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 01:39:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3100280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koalathebear/pseuds/koalathebear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"What if Khan had contacted Quinn after his men picked up Carrie?"</i>
</p><p> </p><p>In 4.07 Redux and 4.08 Halfway to a Donut, Carrie was obviously unwell and needed medical treatment.  Why didn't Khan take her to the hospital or back to the embassy for treatment?  She could have died without medical treatment so just taking her back to his place seems like a bad idea.  I realise that he probably didn't feel right driving up to the doors of the embassy but he could have called someone…</p><p>After that, I'm not sure where she ended up getting medical treatment.  Shifa International Hospitals on Pitras Bukhari Road is 20 minutes away from the embassy but the episode really made it look as though the embassy might have its own hospital or at least its own clinic within its walls. After the shooting, I saw people in medical scrubs in the halls and also the way Carrie was talking to Quinn – it looked as though they were at the embassy and she was telling him to get Lockhart to meet them in the secure room at the embassy itself.  Images <a href="http://koalathebear.tumblr.com/post/106952979361/chaseangela-answered-from-the-way-the-episode-was">here</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Poisoned

**Author's Note:**

> wisegeek says this about Phenylethylamine:
> 
>   _Phenylethylamine also known as 2-phenylethylamine or phenethylamine, is a substance best known for its natural occurrence in the nervous system of humans and other mammals, where it is believed to act as a neurotransmitter or neuromodulator. It has stimulant effects and is important to the neurochemistry of infatuation and romantic love. It is a trace amine and a natural monoamine alkaloid. In the human brain, it causes the release of the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and dopamine. There are also large numbers of derivatives of phenylethylamine, many of which are used medically or recreationally._

*

*

*

"What is this? What is this place? Where are you taking me?" Carrie demanded wildly, the world spinning around her, her head pounding, nausea rising up inside of her. "Don't! Don't! Please don't!" she screamed in terror. "Take your hands off of me!" Panic rose inside of her again, her arms pinned to her side and the images assailing her mind continued to torment her.

In her mind, the mob surrounded the car and it was her writhing body being pulled from the car, it was her body being trampled to death amidst the hate.

Two men dragged her from the car and down a darkened driveway, through the doorway of a house. All she could hear was screaming, an unrelenting scream that went on and on. After a while she realised that her own screams were barely drowning out the screams in her head.

She felt the strait-jacket being removed from her as she stood and stared wildly around unfamiliar surroundings. Her vision was blurred and she was dizzy, her breathing laboured.

"Sssh … you're safe here," a voice murmured calmly. "Keep her still ... don’t let her hurt herself …" Carrie was almost hysterical, collapsing onto the ground, arms hugging herself as she looked around wildly, confused and dazed, crawling along the ground as if she wanted to escape.

Khan looked at her cellphone but it was locked and the chances of her being lucid enough to help him unlock it so that he could look into the address-book to find an emergency contract were slim. 

He picked her up and carried her to the bed, settling her down. 

"Should we take her to the hospital?" Saad asked him and Khan shook his head.

"No, it would attract far too much attention," he said. "That's why I told you to bring her here," he muttered, his face distracted.

Khan dropped to the ground beside Carrie who was curled in the fetal position and sobbing uncontrollably in panic. He put his hand on her arm and kept his voice firm and gentle.

"Carrie … I need to call someone so that you can get help … tell me who..." he asked her firmly, trying to get her dazed eyes to focus upon him.

"Leave me alone," she hissed, her face contorted.

"Tell me the name of someone we can trust," he urged her. "You need help."

His words must have struck a chord because there was a glimmer of lucidity in her eyes as his words penetrated her hallucinations for a moment. "Quinn … Peter Quinn," she managed to say.


	2. A Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Khan contacts Quinn

The woman's voice through the phone-line was polite and almost mechanical as she repeated her standard refrain. "I'm sorry, sir, but the embassy is currently closed. We re-open again tomorrow at 8am. Embassy hours are between 8am and 4.30, Mondays to Fridays and closed on Saturdays and Sundays."

Khan's voice was patient but firm. "Please put me through to Peter Quinn or a consular duty officer. Tell them that there has been an incident involving Carrie Mathison and that this is urgent," he instructed her, his tone conveying authority and conviction.

There was a moment's silence as the woman processed his words. "Please hold the line, sir."

He waited, his eyes not moving from the figure on the bed that had become still and quiet for a moment.

*

At the embassy compound, the tension was almost palpable in the control room as everyone stared helplessly up at the screen that had gone uncommunicatively black. 

"In your estimation, are Haqqani and Saul still in that house?" Lockhart demanded, his face frustrated. He was clearly moving in territory that was extremely unfamiliar to him and the catastrophic implications of Saul's kidnapping were almost overwhelming to consider.

Quinn glanced over as one of the drone operators replied to the CIA Director. He knew the answer before the man replied.

"Images from the drone are unreadable at this hour, sir, so there's no way of telling."

There was a knock on the door of the ops room. "Come in," someone called.

"Sir? The ambassador's here," one of the Director's aides informed him.

"Okay," Lockhart answered, a frown on his face.

Quinn watched him leave the room with a grim face. He rubbed his face tiredly. It had been a shit day and it only looked to be getting worse by the second. He hadn't heard from Carrie since she had left to take a well-needed rest and he debated about whether to check in on her or let her rest for longer.

His cell vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out and stared down at the number curiously, recognising the embassy switchboard number. It was a strange time for a call and to date, he had never been assigned the role of after-hours consular duty officer.

"Quinn," he answered briefly.

"Mr Quinn, I have someone claiming that they need to speak to you urgently about Ms Mathison," Nancy's voice told him.

" _What?_ Put him through," he ordered tersely, leaving the ops room barging through doors in the direction of Carrie's living quarters.

"Peter Quinn?" a well-educated man's voice asked him.

"Yes. Who is this?" he demanded as he left the station and grew closer to the staff accommodation area.

He heard an unfamiliar voice speak. Calm and well-educated. "This is Aasar Khan. Carrie Mathison needs your help."


	3. An Incident Averted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"...the last thing we need is another incident with a CIA station chief," Khan's voice was calm and reasonable._

Quinn's face was drawn and tense as he pulled into the long driveway of Colonel Aasar Khan's residence. Given that Carrie was supposed to be in her room resting, he still had no idea what the fuck he was doing going to the residence of the ISI counterterrorism chief to retrieve her just after 3 am in the morning. 

His mind was racing with questions. A quick check of her room had confirmed that she was indeed missing, but that still didn't mean that he wasn't walking into some trap set for him by Pakistan's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence.

The door opened on his first knock and a middle aged man let him in. He raised his hands in the air as two solidly built goons patted him down, retrieving his Glock from its holster.

"I expect to get that back," he told them grimly. They did not reply.

"The Colonel is waiting for you, sir," the middle aged man told him politely, moving ahead of him to open the door for him with a servile deference that Quinn found incredibly annoying.

Quinn stepped through the doorway impatiently, scanning the room swiftly. High ceilings, carved wood furniture, expensive rugs and costly furnishings. The whole room screamed privilege and influence, as did the tall man in uniform who was seated at a desk. The man rose to his feet as Quinn entered the room.

"Please accept my apologies for that," he gestured in the direction of the hallway,"but your weapons are neither wanted nor needed here, Mr Quinn," Khan told him calmly, his elegant British accent particularly pronounced.

"Where the fuck is she?" Quinn demanded tersely, his gaze raking over the other man who stood tall and straight in his uniform. He knew the lieutenant-colonel from the Pakistan intelligence service by name and reputation and had seen him across the room in the recent meetings at the embassy but the two men had never spoken before now. 

Dark-haired, dark-eyed with smooth olive skin, the man was of an age with him, perhaps a little older and he knew that the wariness and suspicion in Khan's dark eyes was mirrored in his own.

"She's in the bedroom," Khan told him and Quinn's eyebrows shot up suspiciously. "Come with me."

They walked into a large bedroom and Quinn's pupils dilated, his mouth tightening ominously. "A fucking strait-jacket?" he demanded as he stared at Carrie.

"She became very agitated again - we had to restrain her so that she didn’t hurt herself."

Carrie was whimpering quietly, twitching on the bed with her face contorted. "Oh God! No!" she moaned as she stared at things that clearly were not there. Quinn stared at her in horror.

"What the fuck happened? What have you done to her?" he demanded of the Pakistani counter-intelligence chief, his eyes dark with suspicion and accusation as he sat on the edge of the bed and attempted to calm her. 

"I've done nothing except to help her," Khan told him coldly.

Carrie moaned from the bed. "Hey, easy," Quinn said soothingly. "It's Quinn … you're ok … you're ok …" he told her, putting a hand on her shoulder and keeping his voice soft and calm. 

She didn't appear to recognise him at first but after a few moments, quietened enough to allow him to smooth the damp, tangled hair from her face. She looked awful - dark circles around her sunken eyes, her skin blotchy and red.

"Quinn?" she demanded incredulously, staring at him and trying to focus her vision without much success.

"Yeah … I'm here," he told her firmly.

"The fuck."

"My thoughts exactly," he said grimly.

"My men brought her here tonight," Khan told him. "She was in quite a state - causing a commotion in the street. Police had her in custody in lock-up. She was acting completely crazy – kept calling me someone named Brody."

Quinn flinched, his eyes flicking to Carrie and then back to Khan. "Why were your men following her?" he demanded.

"They weren't."

"You said they brought her here."

"The police notified us that she was acting strangely."

"So the police were following her," Quinn questioned.

"Only after she beat up a security guard and started shooting people with her fingers," Khan informed him and Quinn's eyes widened and he stared back at Carrie in disbelief.

"Is she a drug user?" Khan asked delicately. "Her behaviour greatly resembled someone having an episode following usage of a hallucinogenic …"

"Not recreationally," Quinn snapped at him. "She has a mental health … condition," he bit out. "But she has medication – her condition is under control … I don't know what the fuck this is," he muttered. "Why did you bring her here instead of the hospital?" he wanted to know.

"I couldn't leave her out there – it wasn't going to end well. Taking her to a public hospital wasn't an option – the last thing we need is another incident with a CIA station chief," Khan's voice was calm and reasonable.

Quinn frowned and nodded. "You're right … thank you," he said briefly, reluctant gratitude in his voice. Khan acknowledged his thanks with the slightest inclination of his head. "There's a clinic at the embassy," he started to say. Then his mouth twisted. "But I'm sure you already knew that as well as the complete layout of the whole building."

Khan said nothing, but his steady gaze confirmed the assumption.

Quinn rose to his feet and picked up Carrie in his arms. She slumped limply in his arms as he carried her to his car. "Maybe you should keep that on," Khan commented when Quinn started removing the straitjacket once he had her in the front seat. 

"Carrie – can you hear me?" Quinn asked her gently. She nodded. "I don't want to take you in with this one … so let me know you're going to behave, ok?" She nodded again, dazedly, blinking at the sunlight that was starting to brighten around them. He glanced over at Khan who handed him Carrie's belongings as well as his Glock.

"Thank you for calling me," he told him and Khan nodded.

"I hope she'll be all right," he said quietly. "I hope you believe me when I tell you that I had nothing to do with this," he said seriously and Quinn nodded.

Quinn drove swiftly but carefully back to the embassy. "How are you feeling?" he asked her, glancing over and seeing that she was slumped forward, her head in her hands.

"Like shit …" she mumbled. "I have no idea what happened," she muttered in confusion, closing her eyes to try to dissipate the pain in her skull.

"Has anything like this ever happened before when you were on your meds?" he asked her.

She shook her head. "Never … this was just … so weird," she told him. "I don't understand …" She frowned, trying to ignore the pounding in her temples. "Maybe someone fucked with my meds."

"What?" he demanded incredulously.

"I don't know Quinn – I just don't know how to explain this situation otherwise."

"We'll get them to run blood tests at the clinic," he told her. "Just rest," and she closed her eyes and slumped back in the seat. "Meds in my purse …" she mumbled before she fell asleep.

At the embassy, one of the marines held the door open as Quinn lifted Carrie out of the seat and carried her into the clinic.

"What happened, sir?"

"Psychotic episode," Quinn said quietly. He set Carrie down on the hospital bed and reached her purse. "I need you to do a blood test on her and also run an analysis on these – we think her medication may have been tampered with."

He went to sit in the waiting room. "Call me as soon as she's awake again," he told them.


	4. Choices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is confirmed that Carrie's meds were swapped out.

Carrie stared down at the small pill container that the nurse handed her. "Your new meds," the nurse told her sympathetically.

"Thank you," she replied glancing up as Quinn walked into the room quickly. 

"Well?" he demanded urgently. "They said the test results were back." He glanced from her face down to the pill container she held and back at her face.

"We have a breach here at the embassy," she confirmed flatly. "Someone definitely switched out my meds," she told him, gesturing at the test results beside her on the bed.

"Fuck." He picked up the printout and scanned it swiftly. "Phenethylamine?" he demanded incredulously. "Shit, Carrie – 25I-NBOMe's a hallucinogen."

She stared at him grimly. "Yeah, no shit - twice as potent as LSD. No wonder I was completely fucking out of my head."

"If you kept popping this instead of Clozapine you could have died." 

"Or they could have fucked up my mind even more than it is," she said wryly. 

"Pretty fucking low of them," he muttered furiously.

"They exploited a weakness," she said with a shrug in a feigned attempt at nonchalance. "The blood tests show that it's almost out of my system now.

"They poisoned you!" he pointed out angrily. "What if you'd kept taking them?"

She sighed. "At least there are no illusions where anyone stands." She glanced up at him. "I believe Khan when he says it wasn't him, though."

"Me, too," Quinn agreed. "He wasn't lying to me about this – whatever else he might have been hiding."

"Where's Lockhart?" Carrie asked.

"Uh, with the ambassador, I think." He looked at her questioningly.

"Pry him away, discreetly," Carrie told him seriously. "I need you, him and me in the secure room as soon as possible." Quinn nodded. "Just the three of us, until we figure out who we can trust."

"Okay," he told her, his eyes dark with worry as he strode off and Carrie watched him leave, relieved not for the first time that she had managed to override his misgivings and persuade him to return to Islamabad …

*  
 _"Help me! Carrie! Get off of me! You fucking lied to me! Goddamn you! You fucking lied! You fucking lied to me! Fuck you! Fuck you! Goddamn you! Goddamn you! You fucking lied to me! Oh, goddamn you! Goddamn you!_

  


Carrie's eyes were filled with tears as she stared up at the monitor, disbelief and devastation in her eyes as she pulled her headset off and turned away. Quinn had been watching her narrowly as she had given the instructions to Saul. She had known he was watching her, had seen his gaze on her face even as she avoided his eyes. 

He had known exactly what she was doing and why and he had given her his silent support. Like her, he knew that it was the right thing to do but also knew that Saul would probably never forgive her for the betrayal. He watched as she remained in the control room, face distraught and breathing ragged.

When Quinn put his arms around her shoulders, he felt her quiver in response. "Come on Carrie – there's nothing more that you can do here," he told her, pulling off his own ear piece and setting it down on the table beside the console.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck …" she whispered brokenly, her eyes huge with horror at what she had done.

"Come on – let's get you out of here," he told her gently but firmly, guiding her out of the control room.

She remained silent as he reached into his pocket and pulled out her keys, opening the door to her unit. 

"I knew there was a reason I gave you my keys …" she mumbled, still in a daze.

"Yeah – suppose that makes me prime suspect for swapping out your meds then," he said with a crooked smile and she pulled a face. Even though Quinn had the keys to her unit, it had never crossed her mind for one second that he might be the one. "Guess that means you trust me."

"I'm not in the mood for jokes, Quinn," she told him tiredly. He ushered her in, turned on the light and guided her to one of the two plain brown recliners.

He dropped down into the recliner across from her and watched her silently, knowing that there was nothing that he could do for her except to listen.

"I was trying to do the right thing for once…I was trying to keep someone alive, instead of steering them to their death," she told him emotionally.

"Which you did," he reminded her. 

"I don't know what I did. I betrayed Saul. He was counting on me, and I betrayed him. I mean, how how could saving someone's life be the wrong choice? But it was, because there are only wrong choices. And it's like I'm-I'm finally seeing it now for the first time. Nothing good can happen in this fucked-up world that we've made for ourselves. Can it?" she asked him, a lost tone in her voice. She looked at him in supplication as if he could give her answers.

Quinn was silent for a moment. It took every single ounce of his self-control to resist the temptation to comfort her, to reach out to put his arms around her and tell her that everything was going to be all right. The thing was, he was pretty sure things weren't going to be all right. Tonight was just the next fuck up in a long, seemingly neverending line of disasters. Worse, he wasn't sure his self-control was up to just stopping at a comforting hug … 

He stared at her for a long moment, conflicted and pained at his inability to offer her any consolation. Finally he spoke again. "We've been up for two days. I think we could both use some rest," he told her inadequately. He rose to his feet. "Good night," he told her as he left her sitting in her chair, motionless. "Make sure you get some sleep, Carrie." He left, not even trusting himself to touch her arm reassuringly ...


	5. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carrie and Quinn find out from Khan who swapped out her meds

Less than an hour after he left Carrie's apartment, there was a pounding on the door to Quinn's apartment and his eyes snapped open in the darkness.

"Quinn! Open the door!" he heard Carrie call out urgently.

He ran to the door, swinging it open and staring at her in shock. "The fuck, Carrie – what's wrong?"

Carrie stared up at him, wild-eyed, taking in his tousled hair and the old t-shirt he wore to bed.

He stared down at her as she barged past him into his room as if she owned the place. "Shit, Carrie - did you get any sleep at all?" he demanded.

She nodded. "I was just about to … but then I got a call from Khan – he wants to meet."

"Trying to finish the job?" he asked sardonically.

"You already said that you don't think he poisoned me," Carrie told him witheringly. "He says he has important information for me …"

Quinn's eyes narrowed. "Want me to come with you or just have eyes from a distance?" he asked her.

"From a distance," she suggested and he nodded. 

"Not like you to be so cautious, Carrie. Turning over a new leaf?" he asked her, faint amusement in his eyes despite the seriousness of the situation.

She glared at him. "After wandering around Islamabad on my own, tripping out of my fucking mind I think I can be forgiven for having some very serious trust issues - I just don't trust anyone right now," she told him although there was a moment's silence between them in which both processed the implication of her presence at his quarters.

"Give me a second," he told her, returning a little later, his ratty t-shirt replaced with a fresh shirt and his tousled hair combed hastily.

"By the way it's raining – so bring an umbrella."

*

Carrie approached the dark shadow standing in the shopping centre calmly, not glancing behind her, aware that Quinn was keeping watch from the darkness - probably getting drenched in the process because he would have put his umbrella away to remain hidden. 

Khan turned as she approached, his face calm and barely illuminated by the lights behind him.

"Well, you won," she told him flatly.

"Did we?" he asked her, expressionlessly.

"You said you had something to tell me ..."

"What happened to you the other night with the drugs, it wasn't me," he told her.

"I know. Quinn's told me as much," she replied, disappointed that he had dragged her out for this non-revelation.

"I need you to believe that it's the truth."

"Why?" she demanded.

"I'm not sure. Maybe because it's true." He stared at her face and made a sound of frustration. "You make everything so hard, you know that? Next time you complain about the distrust between us, you remember this. Right now." He glared at her and started to walk away from him as she stared after him, puzzled by his outburst of rage.

"That was fucked-up, what they did to me," she called out to him and he stopped in his tracks and turned back to face her. She swallowed hard. "And - and maybe it was fair; maybe it's what we do to each other all the time, but it didn't feel fair. Not at all."

Khan went still, the anger leaving his face. "I believe you though." He came walking back to her and looked down at her face searchingly. "I know you're telling the truth, because I remember. Not … not everything, but enough." Her faced was sincere. "But you can't do this. You can't tell me you have something important - "

*

When Khan eventually left her, Carrie turned and headed back down the corridors of the deserted shopping centre, holding up her umbrella as she walked under the worst of the drips. She walked for a time in the darkness, calm and unworried, aware that Quinn was shadowing her from a safe distance. 

It was only when they were well away from the meeting place and out of sight of watchful eyes did he step out from the shadows, his light eyes studying hers closely from a face that was drenched with rain.

His hair and clothes were also water-logged. "Shit, Quinn, you're soaked to the skin," she muttered apologetically, staring up into his wet face.

"I'll live," he said tersely, falling into step beside her as they arrived back at the car.

"Did you hear anything of what he said?" she asked him

"Some – but the rain blocked the sound for part of it," Quinn muttered. 

They passed the drive in silence, waiting until they were back inside the embassy compound before speaking again, Carrie walking with Quinn back to his quarters so that he could dry off.

As he went to grab a towel, Carrie called out,"So how much did you hear?" 

She glanced around the room, virtually identical to her room in terms of layout, furniture and starkness. Neither of them had made any effort to personalise their living space at the embassy.

"Enough to hear that the guy seems to have a thing for you," Quinn remarked, towelling his hair as he walked out of the bedroom. "You'll lose your security clearance if you marry the ISI counterintelligence chief," he quipped.

"Very funny," Carrie remarked as Quinn walked into the room shirtless, towelling down and pulling on a dry shirt.

"He told me who swapped out my meds."

"And?" Quinn looked at her expectantly.

"Dennis Boyd." She told him, watching his grey eyes widen in a shock that rivalled her own. He stared at her from across the room, his damp hair falling onto his forehead before he used the towel in his hand to dry it roughly.

"Holy fuck," he breathed, throwing the towel over the back of a chair.

"I know," she agreed emphatically.

"Shit," he muttered, frowning as he considered the implications of this latest revelation.

"Why don't you look more surprised, though?" 

Quinn shrugged. "The guy's got opportunity and access for sure and he's always been a squirrelly bastard… I've lost count of the number of times the ambassador's had me pulling his drunk ass out of seedy dives here in Islamabad …"

"Khan says he's working against us and he's the one who's been leaking the information…"

"What about the person inside the ISI who's running Boyd, though?" Quinn asked.

"Khan didn't say."

"But he must know …" Before Carrie could reply, Quinn held up a hand. "I get it, it's one thing to rat out Boyd, he's not going to betray his own side …"

"Fuck. What do we do with this information?" Carrie asked him. 

"We have to tell Lockhart - and that means telling the ambassador."

"Yeah - transparency, teamwork and the other T-word," Carrie agreed. "But she'll go ballistic – might fuck things up even more …" Carrie told him.

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Quinn disagreed. "She's sensible - and she knows that fucker of a husband better than any of us…"

"OK," Carrie said, exhaling determinedly. "We tell Lockhart and the ambassador first thing in the morning – together."

"Them together?"

"No, us – you and I together," she told him. 

"You want me there to lend you gravitas?" he asked, looking a little amused.

"Something like that … the ambassador trusts you, if you tell her something like this, she's more likely to believe you." Quinn raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

"Fine by me – as long as you promise me you try to get some sleep tonight. You look like shit."

"Fuck you," she told him without any rancour.

She went to the door, pausing before turning around.

"I told you before I was grateful you came … even when you didn’t want to. I don't know what made you change your mind… but thank God you did," she told him seriously. "I've never needed someone so badly …"

"Whatever you need, Carrie," he said casually, deflecting the compliment and lightening the heaviness of the atmosphere.

Quinn locked the door after she left, turned off the light and walked back to the bedroom, dropping onto his bed and closed his eyes. Some prayed before bed but Quinn chose to mutter a few heartfelt curse words before allowing himself to drift off to sleep.

He'd long since given up wondering how the fuck Carrie Mathison had managed to get under his skin the way she had …


End file.
